Bomb threat at Sheffield Middle School forces evacuation

SHEFFIELD VILLAGE — A bomb scare at Sheffield Middle School, 1919 Harris Road, interrupted classes for a few hours Thursday as students were forced to evacuate the building.Similar to the scare that occurred Wednesday at Olmsted Falls High School, a threatening message was located on a wall, said Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City Schools Superintendent Dr. Will Folger.
“We followed our procedures and evacuated the building,” he said.
The 425 students, along with teachers and staff, were evacuated from the Middle School about 10:30 a.m. and taken to Brookside High School, which is across the street.
“Normally, we would have taken everyone to the stadium, but there were some bee issues,” Folger said. “Instead, we took them to the High School.”
Parents of the Middle School students were notified of the threat and evacuation by an all-call system, Folger said.
Sheffield Village police Chief Larry Bliss said that they responded to the threat and did not find any bombs.
“We searched the inside and outside of the building,” he said. “We looked through lockers, cabinets, the whole nine yards.”
Bliss said that the situation, particularly the message on the wall, had some similarities to the Olmsted Falls incident.
“The message was actually pretty close to what was written in Olmsted Falls,” he said. “We are still investigating the whole thing, so we don’t want to go into too many details. But it was pretty close to identical.”
Police remained at the building until about 1:30 p.m., when they cleared the scene.
“The school was given the all clear around 12:30,” Bliss said.
Students were not immediately brought back into the building until it was deemed safe, Folger said.
“They were in the middle of having lunch,” he said. “We let them finish before bringing them back over.”
Despite the lack of threats in Sheffield Village, Bliss said that his department was ready.
“We train for this type of thing,” he said. “Things went off without issue. We cleared the building and searched. We were ready.”
While no arrests have been made, Bliss said that police currently have a person of interest in the case. He would not confirm if the person was a student at the school.
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said.

About the Author

Jon is a 2011 graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. While at Calvin, Jon worked for the college newspaper, Chimes, where he was the sports editor and co-managing editor. Jon began writing for The Morning Journal in March of 2013 as a crime reporter before moving to the sports department in December of 2013. Reach the author at jbehm@morningjournal.com
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